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20.45 We are going to wrap proceedings up for this evening, but we will have more throughout the night and tomorrow on the various victims' stories as well as survivors' tales. Please check telegraph.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk/world or our Algeria page for the latest, or follow us on Twitter @TelegraphWorld. Good night and thanks for reading.

20.14 Mohammed Said, Algeria's communications minister, has said the country will authorise the continued use of its airspace for France's military intervention in Mali based in its own interests.

Following the deadly hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant by militants claiming retaliation for France's intervention, Said also said the country was strengthening security at its industrial sites.

This is an issue that will be addressed in accordance with the supreme interests of Algeria.

In this kind of situation, national interest takes precedence and it is the country's supreme authorities who will judge whether to authorise or not authorise such action.

The raid is thought to have been led by Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a field commander close to Belmokhtar who is thought to be among the 32 dead militants.

Nigeri was a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005, according to Mauritanian news reports.

The GSPC joined up with al-Qaeda to form al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in 2006 and has now spread across North Africa and the Sahara region known as the Sahel.

Belmokhtar's fighters launched their dawn attack five days after French jets began strikes to halt advances by AQIM fighters in neighbouring Mali but the plan is thought to be too elaborate to have been concocted in such a short time.

One of those involved in the "inside job" was of French nationality, sources have told The Telegraph, in what appears to be a blow to those in charge of safety at the highly strategic In Amenas plant, which accounts for 12 per cent of Algeria's gas production.

The unnamed French accomplice is said to have changed sides once his comrades in arms had broken into the desert site in southeastern Algeria after attacking bus at a false checkpoint. He then took part in the kidnapping operation before being killed during the Algerian army assault on the site.

Some terrorists are reported to have known internal procedures at the plant as well as the room numbers of expatriates.

19.36 For those of you who missed Alan Wright's interview earlier today, here is the video of the health and safety adviser reliving his terrifying 24 hours.

19.31 Ali Whiteside, the daughter of Kenneth Whiteside, has left a moving tribute to her father on Twitter, as well as to any of those that might have lost a loved one in the siege.

<noframe>Twitter: Ali Whiteside - Rest in Peace Dad. We love you. Forever &amp; always. To the families who lost someone, you are in our hearts. <a href="http://t.co/p5SoswmK" target="_blank">http://t.co/p5SoswmK</a></noframe>

18.58 12 bodies being held at the morgue at In Amenas hospital, where victims of the crisis were taken, are Japanese, a hospital source has told the AFP news agency.

Tokyo has said it has had no confirmation of the fate of 10 of its nationals who remain unaccounted for.

18.52 In BP's latest statement, the group says at the time of the attack there were 18 employees at In Amenas. 14 of them are safe and secure, with two of them sustaining injuries that are not life threatening.

They are "gravely concerned" however about four of its employees who are missing.

18.44 An Algerian television station has broadcast what it said was a tape recording of one of the hostage-takers at the Ain Amenas gas plant talking to a member of Algeria's special forces, and another recording in which he threatens to blow up the complex.

In it, Nigeri demands the release of a number of imprisoned terrorists in return for releasing foreign hostages.

Here is a bit of the transcript:

Abdel Rahman el-Nigeri: "We want the prisoners you have. Our comrades who were arrested and imprisoned 15 years ago. We want 100 of them."

Army Officer: "How many?"

Nigeri: "One hundred, one hundred."

Army Officer: "Ok, continue, continue."

Nigeri: "We are prepared to die. Either we get our brothers out or we die."

Army Officer: "I shall pass on your demands to the leadership."

Nigeri: "I would like to talk to you face to face. Did you hear me? I want to talk to you face to face."

Army Officer: "Shall I come to the factory in centre number one? Or tell me the place and I shall come to you."

Nigeri: "I have spoken to the British but they are far away (from a solution). They have contacted Mali and (militant leader Moktar) Belmokhtar. Do you understand? If we talk directly it is easier for me."

The CIA's campaign of lethal drone strikes against the organisation is to be exempted from new rules on the use of targeted killings being drawn up in Washington.

Peter Foster, our US editor explains:

The CIA has greatly increased up its drone strikes in Afghanistan, partly by loosening the criteria for strikes from having clear intelligence about the identity of targets, to relying on patterns of behaviour or vehicle movements – so-called 'signature strikes'.

The exemption is being driven by concern that the window for weakening al-Qaeda in the region is closing.

18.15 Some hostages were quoted by France's l’Express magazine as saying the kidnappers knew “internal procedures, the room numbers of expatriates, and they attacked the BP and JGC (the Japanese company) bases, the only ones where there were foreigners.”

All this suggested, one hostage is quoted as saying, that they benefited from “inside complicity".

18.04 Youcef Yousfi, Algeria's oil minister, has hit out at suggestions that foreigners will be allowed to secure its oil facilities - short answer - they won't be allowed.

It is out of the question to allow foreign security forces to handle the security of our oil facilities.

17.19 France's Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has described the hostage-taking in Algeria and its bloody aftermath as an "act of war," AFP reports.

"What strikes me the most is that we're saying 'hostage-taking' but when there are so many people concerned, I think this is an act of war," he said on France 5 television.

17.09 This in from AP: an Algerian security official says bomb squads scouring the gas plant where the hostage siege ended yesterday have found 25 more bodies.

The state of some of the bodies discovered Sunday is making it difficult to tell whether the dead were hostages or the attackers, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

It is unclear at this point how this grim discovery tallies with the 25 bodies of hostages and 32 bodies of militants reported earlier.

16.29 Jim Roberts, one of the New York Times's most prolific Twitter presences, updates us on the aftermath of events for the Japanese contingent of the hostages.

Alan Wright, a 37-year-old health and safety adviser for BP from Portsoy, Scotland, has been telling Sky News how he fortuitously avoided capture by turning up to work early on Wednesday.

Mr Wright was not in the living quarters of the In Amenas gas plant when the terrorists' attack began, and was alerted to the presence of the militants on the site by colleagues, who said they could be disguised as gendarmes or security guards.

From before 9am on Wednesday until 5am the following morning, Mr Wright sat huddled in an office with taped-over windows as the capture of the complex by militants directed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar went on around him. He escaped through a wire fence to safety with colleagues.

Mr Wright said he would not rule out returning to Algeria, stoically adding: "There are worse places in the world to work."

Alan Wright on Sky News/SKY

15.07 Our Chief Reporter Gordon Rayner has sent through this report on the deceased Scottish project planner Kenneth Whiteside, killed in the hostage siege at In Amenas.

Friends of Kenneth Whiteside, 59, originally from Glenrothes, Fife, and now based in South Africa, took to Facebook to express their grief over his "senseless murder".

Mr Whiteside's wife Catherine and daughters Nova-Leigh and Ali, who live in Johannesburg, declined to speak with media and asked for privacy.

Stewart Goodwin, a fellow Scot living in Johannesburg, wrote on Facebook yesterday: "Lost a dear friend in Algeria today. He was the quietest and humble man you will ever know. He leaves behind two great daughters and a wonderful wife. How will we understand this."

Mr Goodwin added: "My heartfelt condolences go to the family and friends who are trying to come to terms with this senseless murder. May God have mercy on your soul."

"Kenny was a very nice person and we're glad we met him," said Billy Hunter from Scotland. "We'll always remember him and his bagpipes. I hope the scumbags who carried out this terrible act got what was coming to them!"

14.50 This tweet from the Foreign Office confirms the 22 British hostages who escaped alive are back in the UK.

<noframe>Twitter: Foreign Office (FCO) - The 22 British nationals who survived the terrorist incident in <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Algeria" target="_blank">#Algeria</a> are safe &amp; back in the UK.</noframe>

But what of the fate of the others unaccounted for last night? As we reported earlier, electrical specialist Frank Dobson was not present at the plant, contrary to previous reports. He is safe and well, according to family.

The other five British nationals and one British resident held hostage were as follows:

• Kenneth Whiteside, 59, from Glenrothes, Scotland - friends now believe Mr Whiteside was killed at In Amenas• David Murray, 47, from Kirkby, Liverpool - is alive and at home • Barry Lawson: from St Andrews, Scotland - still unconfirmed• Garry Barlow: 49, from Liverpool - still unconfirmed• Colombian BP employee Carlos Estrada - confirmed dead• An unnamed British national - still unconfirmed

13.59 Mokhtar Belmokhtar is "ready to negotiate" with Algeria and the West on the condition they stop bombing Islamist-held North Mali, Mauritania's Sahara Media news agency claims.

13.43 More detail on the nine Japanese hostages executed over the course of the four-day stand-off between Masked Brigade terrorists and the Algerian security forces.

One Algerian witness identified only as 'Brahim' told AFP today of the following sequence of events:

Wednesday: Three Japanese workers killed as they try to escape from a bus taking them to the airport as the militant attack unfolds

Thursday: The gunmen take six others to the residential compound, where they have seized hundreds of hostages. 'Brahim' recounted how a terrorist shouted "open the door!" with a strong north American accent, and opened fire. Two more Japanese killed.

Saturday: Brahim and his colleagues find the bodies of the remaining four Japenese hostages in the compound where they were being held as the siege ends.

He added the terrorists appeared to have inside knowledge of the plant's structure, telling AFP: "They were aware of all of our procedures." The Japanese firm JCG says ten of its Japanese workers are still missing.

In Tokyo, a foreign ministry official said: "We are in a position not to comment on this kind of information at all. Please understand."

13.37 Reports yesterday that Kevin Dobson, an electrical specialist, was caught up in the events at In Amenas were mistaken, BP has informed The Telegraph on behalf of his family.

Mr Dobson was not present at the time of the attack on Wednesday by the Masked Brigade, the Islamic militant group linked to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

13.22 The French foreign ministry has said that nationals who are in the Northern African zone affected must be aware of the potential threats they are facing.

French nationals who are in the zone (of action of AQIM - from Mauritania to Niger via northern Mali), must know that their freedom and their lives are explicitly and directly threatened.

12.59 The Algeria hostage taking is "Europe's September 11," claimed Asiem El-Difraoui, a Middle East expert with the Berlin Institute for Media and Communication Studies today.

"It is a huge coup, as big as September 11 for Europe," he told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar was the "main winner" in the hostage taking, he added.

"He didn't even need to stage manage the event, as Westerners took charge of that.

12.30 This image of a shellshocked freed Norwegian hostage, Oddvar Birkedal, was taken yesterday at In Amenas police station. Five Norwegians are still missing, while eight are safe, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg confirmed in his most recent statement.

REUTERS/Louafi Larbi

12.10 One of the most significant elements of the Prime Minister's statement earlier today was his focus on the geopolitical implications for the West.

He vowed to use Britain's chairmanship of the G8 to ensure terrorism in the Maghreb and West Africa took centre stage in Britain's diplomatic efforts.

It requires a response that is patient and painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve and that is what we will deliver over these coming years.

What we face is an extremist, Islamist, al Qaida-linked terrorist group. Just as we had to deal with that in Pakistan and in Afghanistan so the world needs to come together to deal with this threat in north Africa.

It is linked to al Qaida, it wants to destroy our way of life, it believes in killing as many people as it can. We need to work with others to defeat the terrorists and to close down the ungoverned spaces where they thrive with all the means that we have.

Cameron hinting at a sustained response to Al-Qaeda's allies in Africa earlier

11.55 Journalist Trond Sundnes sends us this incredible story from Norway's VG newspaper of an escapee from the Statoil gas plant who trekked for 15 hours in a party of eight, having escaped from the heavily armed hostagetakers.

The unnamed 57-year-old from Bergen in Norway went by foot 15 hours through the desert to get to safety, after deciding to escape Thursday night. He had been trapped at the plant since it was beseiged on Wednesday morning.

Together with seven other people he headed to the town of In Amenas, situated nearly five miles east of the gas plant. The party spent 15 hours going through the harsh desert landscape in southern Algeria, according to VG.

The man was severely dehydrated and exhausted when he reached the city late on Friday night, and received medical attention at a hospital when he had arrived. Just before midnight he notified his family that he was alive.

11.47 An update from our Paris correspondent Henry Samuel, on the distressing news of an updated death toll of 25 hostages.

Twenty five bodies were found charred at the Ain Amenas site after terrorrists set a part of the plant on fire, sparking an explosion. The factory is on a 4km dead end road whose only function is to link the living quarters with the plant. The Algerians first attacked the living quarters, then the plant.

When the Algerians launched their first assault on Thursday, the terrorists rushed to their cars with some hostages as they thought the army wouldn't open fire. These hostage takers never made it to the plant as army helicopters opened fire on them. Some hostages managed to escape in the confusion.

In all 34 hostages were in the living quarters.

After having "mopped up" the living quarters, the Algerian army focused on the plant and the second group of terrorists.

A second assault on Friday evening freed 7 Britons and 4 Japanese. There is precious little detail on the final assault as there are no survivors among hostages or terrorists.

11.30 Terrible news from AFP: 25 bodies of hostages have been found inside the Algeria gas plant, confirming a statement from Algeria's Minister of Communication Mohamed Said, who said the death toll would rise today from 23. "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Said told the official APS news agency earlier.

11.08 Some amateur footage broadcast on Algerian television yesterday and acquired by the Associated Press purports to show the aftermath of the standoff with Islamic extremists at the Ain Amenas gas plant in the Sahara desert, filmed by one of the freed hostages.

Dead bodies (blurred for viewers by the Ennhar TV channel) are visible in the footage, which it was not possible to independently verify.

10.57 France's foreign minister Laurence Fabius has also defended Algeria's handling of the hostage crisis, saying the death toll in an assault on the hostage-takers was "very high" but authorities had faced an "intolerable situation".

What everyone needs to know is that these terrorists who attacked this gas plant are killers who pillage, rape, plunder and kill. The situation was unbearable, Fabius said.

It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," he told Europe 1 radio in an interview.

10.42 Hague added that suggestions seven of the hostages had been "executed" by their captors prior to the final battle could be true.

"That sort of thing is quite likely to have happened," he said.

He also said the Algerian army believed the hostages were in "imminent danger" as he sought to justify the loss of life at the gas complex.

Certainly, the Algerians believed that the lives of the hostages were always in imminent danger, that the terrorists were planning blow up the entire installation. This is one of the reasons why they acted as they did.

They decided, as a sovereign country, that was something on their soil that they would deal with and they needed to deal with urgently.

William Hague on the Andrew Marr show this morning

10.40 Foreign Secretary William Hague was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, and said there were 22 British nationals who had survived the attack and were now back in the UK.

"We brought them back and BP brought others back on chartered flights during the night so they are being reunited with their loved ones," he said.

09.20 David Cameron says priority is to get surviving hostages home from Algeria as he condemns "vicious and cowardly" attack.

I know the whole country will want to join me in sending our sympathies and condolences to the families who have undergone an absolutely dreadful ordeal, and now face life without these very precious loved ones.

The priority now must be to get everybody home from Algeria, in terms of this incident, and I have spoken this morning to our ambassador, who is in Algiers, and this morning will be going again to the south of the country to help coordinate that absolutely vital activity.

Now of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched a vicious and cowardly attack.

09.05 David Cameron says three British nationals have died and three more are feared dead.

The Prime Minister says a UK resident has also been killed in the four day stand-off in the desert which reached its dramatic conclusion yesterday.

09.03 Islamist extremists "executed" seven hostages yesterday before a final, bloody assault by the Algerian army ended a four-day siege in the desert.

Algeria's special forces stormed the gas complex, jointly run by BP and staffed by many British workers, after reports that the extremists had begun shooting foreigners they had kidnapped.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said five Britons and one UK resident, called Carlos Estrada, remained "unaccounted for" and the country had to “prepare for bad news”. One Briton had already been confirmed dead on Wednesday.

These are the first chilling images of oil workers surrendering to Al-Qaeda gunman:

BP said last night that four of its employees were still missing several hours after a dramatic firefight inside the gas plant which left more than 30 terrorists dead. The Algerian foreign ministry said that during the course of four days 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed.

In a series of further developments, it also emerged yesterday that:

• A British worker was forced at gunpoint to persuade other Britons out from their hiding place, and was then executed himself; • 15 charred bodies were discovered by Algerian troops who stormed the complex; • Terrorists tried to blow up the plant in a suicide attack before being killed by Algerian special forces; • Booby trap mines were planted by the militants to try to prevent their capture; • American drones were drafted in as an international manhunt was stepped up for the fanatic behind the siege.

The final assault on the gas processing complex began in the middle of yesterday morning, ending a hiatus of almost 48 hours after the first attempt by Algerian forces to overpower the terrorists.

Security sources said the al-Qaeda militants’ last stand had been in a factory or workshop area of the Tigantourine gas plant, which they had held since Wednesday.

The group of about 40 men from the Masked Brigade, also known as Witnesses in Blood, had captured foreign workers in a residential area of the sprawling complex before being cornered in the main plant, about two miles away.

After a two-day stand-off, Algeria’s special forces - known as the Ninjas - launched a final assault. Reports suggested they had reacted to gunfire and the execution of prisoners although it may also be they lost patience.

A security source said: “The assault took place mid-morning. Eleven terrorists lost their lives along with the foreign hostages. We think they were killed in retaliation.”

Above is a picture of two freed British hostages identified as Peter (centre) and Alan (left) standing with an unidentifiedNorwegian hostage outside a police station in In Amenas.

Survivor Stephen McFaul told how he had Semtex strapped to his neck, which his kidnappers had threatened to detonate if there was any rescue attempts (Photo:Reuters)

Some of the luckier British hostages that managed to escape are seen here on a local television station. (Photo:AFP)

British survivor Mark Gran texted his wife Emma to tell her he was safe and well

09.00 Good morning and welcome to live coverage of events following the bloody denouement of the Algerian hostage crisis.